On this #InternationalWomensDay, we wanted to take a moment and appreciate the women who make The Woodlands great. The Woodlands is run by a staff of four women, our Board President is an amazing woman, and some of the most influential people buried here are women. Today we shed a bright, well-deserved light on them.

Jane Piper Baltzell: one of Philadelphia’s most prominent modernist painters(1916-1991)

Born in Philadelphia in 1916, Baltzell studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Arthur B. Carles (a student of Henri Matisse), whose colorist painting style was greatly influential to Baltzell. She was also inspired by the stunning art collections of Dr. Albert Barnes, and wrote that after viewing his collection of paintings by Matisse at the Barnes Foundation she "was thrown into a whole new world of color and feeling."

Baltzell is known for her abstract and colorful still-life paintings that, as one critic wrote, "have the intricacy of a complex musical score." The fact that Baltzell’s favorite shade was white is easily evident in her paintings, in which white paint is used to create a sense of gleaming sunlight, or to contrast with the otherwise vibrant hues of her work. In addition to painting, Baltzell also taught at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Philadelphia College of Art (now known as University of the Arts) from the mid-1950s until 1985.

The current political climate has been rightly described as messy, but it’s not unprecedentedly so. A century ago, women could not legally vote and two centuries ago, neither could people of color. The struggle to extend voting rights to all Americans was a long one, in which some of the country’s most ignoble fears and prejudices were revealed. Yet, and not without the prolonged work of activists and advocates, progress was made. One influential political mover was Mary Grew, a nineteenth century woman who dedicated her life’s work to fighting for women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery, and who is buried at The Woodlands Cemetery. Read Mary Grew’s full story here.

Emily Bliss Souder: Battle of Gettysburg Volunteer Nurse1814 - 1886

Emily Bliss Souder was a volunteer nurse at the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. She lived in Philadelphia with her husband and 4 children. At that point in time, formal organization for trained nurses in the United States had just come to life. In 1861 A woman named Dorothy Dix ”was appointed Superintendent of Female Nurses of the Union Army by Secretary of War Simon Cameron. She was empowered to create a volunteer nurse corps and regulate supplies that were donated to the troops.” (Stanley B. Burns, Nursing in the Civil War, 2009). So, women like Emily Souder and her contemporaries, upon the hearing of significant combat, made the pilgrimage out to scenes of post battle devastation along with doctors, surgeons, and members of the Sanitary Department. Between five and ten thousand women offered their services in the medical field during the Civil War.

The book “Leaves from the battlefield of Gettysburg; a series of letters from a field hospital; and national poems” is a published collection of letters and poems written by Emily Souder describing her nursing experiences. She writes “of the great and pressing want of kind Christian women, who can minister to the bodily suffering and also to the spiritual wants of our poor soldiers…how sorely stricken and wounded our noble soldiers are, and how grievously these rebel wounded are suffering and both lying side by side like brothers.” The book lucidly depicts an inside account of the gruesome aftermath in the weeks following the Battle of Gettysburg, and the crucial role women played during that time. It also provides a glimpse of war in the context of a time period with a limited amount of treatments and technology in the medical world, in comparison to what exists today. The full text can be found here.